{"id":51,"date":"2011-10-12T03:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T03:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/2011\/10\/12\/commercial-work-keebler-elves-on-a-mountaintop-picnic-the-first-female-honey-nut-cheerios-bees\/"},"modified":"2017-04-27T02:32:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T06:32:15","slug":"commercial-work-keebler-elves-on-a-mountaintop-picnic-the-first-female-honey-nut-cheerios-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/2011\/10\/12\/commercial-work-keebler-elves-on-a-mountaintop-picnic-the-first-female-honey-nut-cheerios-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Machmer: Commercial Work: Keebler Picnic & the 1st Female Cheerios Bees!"},"content":{"rendered":"
Concept designer\u00a0Feng Zhu<\/a>\u00a0uses a $150 Wacom tablet rather than a $2,500 Cintiq. I found this — first, hard to believe — then (for students and artists in developing countries) revolutionary.<\/div>\n
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These frames were created last weekend to test a tablet workflow. Now I prefer working on a bright large iMac with a tablet…my Cintiq is used in an elevated contraption above a treadmill (see post<\/a> below). Hopefully story artists in less developed countries will learn to draw on inexpensive tablets. \u00a0It has been liberating to realize we can work anywhere.<\/div>\n
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When starting most digital artists think: “Shesh this tablet sucks! God please I need a Cintiq!” Once comfortable with Cintiq workflows we remain conditioned to tolerate Wacom’s massive eighty five pound twenty-five hundred dollar desk anchor. Don’t buy a Cintiq — it won’t help. Practice, pay off your credit cards, and travel — with a laptop and tablet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Update: yes, these bug-eyed bees creep me out. Fortunately HNC will be around for a while…first attempt, long-term project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

During a recent visit my toddler nieces ate Cheerios straight from the box like velociraptors — with no side-effects from sugar (second ingredient). These fun, commercial, personal side-projects help me relax when I freak about today’s economy — hopefully Keebler will have a vegan line and artificial milk with sugar free cereal will be commonplace — in the meantime….<\/p>\n

The hero of this blog Dr. Seuss advertised mosquito repellant. Standard Oil kept him alive during the Depression. When Theodore Geisel finally published children’s books late in life he was still known by fellow illustrators as “the Flick guy.”<\/p>\n

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For more commercial work by Theodore Geisel see UC San Diego’s thorough online archive: http:\/\/libraries.ucsd.edu\/speccoll\/dsads\/#intro<\/a><\/div>\n
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Relevant conversations among artists on Twitter as the economy became part of our public discourse (first conversation initiated by Ward Jenkins @Wardomatic<\/a>, second by Molly Crabapple @mollycrabapple<\/a>):<\/div>\n

saw that someone left a comment on that Life of a Freelancer link: “you can always say ‘no'” – umm, not if you’re trying to pay the bills.I find artists that claim not to care about money usually have parents who pay for that attitude.\u00a0And not if you’re trying to keep your two kids from starving & not if you’re trying to keep from getting evicted from your rented home, etc.\u00a0Exactly. It’s not always possible to pick & choose, especially during a recession.\u00a0The flip-side is there is an opportunity cost in working with asshole clients…the worst part about shit work is it takes away time from giving 110% to good clients.\u00a01 of 2: There are a lot of people doing great creative work that give advice like turn down a client that offers a rotten deal\u00a02 of 2: most people handing out advice on being a creative pro are NOT 100% freelancers-they have a job that pays the bills
\n—- Another:\u00a0At the start of my career, I was often accused of spending more time promoting myself than I did focusing on my art.\u00a0While it might have been 50\/50, or 60\/40, or 40\/60, this was probably true. I did ALOT of art. But also a LOT of business. And never slept.\u00a0Now, that I have a crew of amazing people that deals with my schlepping, hauling, calling, invoicing and emailing, I\u2019m 90% art time. Conclusion? Devoting yourself to your art is a fucking luxury, and no one should ever criticize a young artist for being a scrappy hustler.\u00a0Cause the business stuff- someone has to do it. Before you\u2019re making enough bank to support an assistant or gallery, that person will be you.\u00a0Me and @KimBoekbinder have talked about how the lie fed to artists is the same at that fed to chicks\u2026 that if you\u2019re good and pretty and nice enough, some man or gallery will sweep you off your feet \u2026and if they don\u2019t come, well it\u2019s positively vulgar to get out of your tower yourself, you whore\u00a0It\u2019s something I think about alot now- how much having cash and a crew frees me to do crazy, ambitious dream projects. The stuff I got criticized for doing when I was starting out still gets done. But it\u2019s considered less vulgar to pay someone else to do it.\u00a0Considering hustling and business stuff vulgar is just another way of saying people who want to transcend their station are vulgar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concept designer\u00a0Feng Zhu\u00a0uses a $150 Wacom tablet rather than a $2,500 Cintiq. I found this — first, hard to believe — then (for students and artists in developing countries) revolutionary. These frames were created last weekend to test a tablet workflow. Now I prefer working on a bright large iMac with a tablet…my Cintiq is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,62,9,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commercials","category-eric-machmer","category-seuss","category-storyboards"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":795,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}